


nostalgie de la boue

by laratoncita



Series: fruit around cyanide [4]
Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Addiction, Brother-Sister Relationships, Character(s) of Color, Drug Use, Flashbacks, Gangs, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Infidelity, Period Typical Attitudes, Weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:13:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25642612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laratoncita/pseuds/laratoncita
Summary: She might wander but she always comes back.
Series: fruit around cyanide [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858951
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	1. in the mouth of the sun

I AM TASTING MYSELF  
IN THE MOUTH OF THE SUN

june jordan

* * *

_February, 1960_

June's birthday that year is on a Monday. That afternoon, after she's been picked up from school by her mother, her father sweeps into the home where they live with two bouquets of flowers.

At the door her mother says, "You brought me flowers already," and it's true. There's a vase of roses at the table in the kitchen, brought on the thirteenth. Fridays are for Faye Blue Thunder without fail; that this one aligned very closely with Valentine's Day doesn't make a difference.

Darrel Curtis grins at her. His eyes are dancing, and he has a bouquet of lilies in each hand, one white and one purple. He says, "And I got you more, darlin'," and June comes into the hallway as he's gifting her mother a kiss. He says, "Hi Junie," afterwards, Stargazers in hand while her mother slips away to find more vases. He gathers her up in his arms, no matter that soon she'll be too big to carry around like that, and says, "Happy birthday!"

She smiles, arms around his neck. She says, "Thank you," and accepts the flowers she's been brought with great care. Every year he brings her a bouquet for her birthday, and he stays a long time to tell her stories about Texas and the parents he left, the mother who lives there with her extended family now that Patrick Curtis is gone. They called him _Pato_ , her father's told her, for the way he walked as a child, no matter that he outgrew it and became a father eventually himself.

Darrel always says he wished he had the chance to take her to meet him. Later, June will wonder why he didn't, and guess very closely to the truth. For now, she lets her father sit in his grief with her, though maybe he shouldn't have. Maybe he shouldn't have done a lot of things. This year, as he does every year, he's brought her gifts she'll forget about as adolescence and then adulthood stretch before her, but in that moment she adores them. The Barbie doll is her favorite—her hair blonde and beautiful.

Before the night ends they cut cake, not a party but just a little celebration for their family. Sonny comes by with his ma, who blinks owlishly at Darrel and seems quieter than usual. June remembers her uncle but just barely; Sonny's memories will only fade as the years come. Jim Blue Thunder was killed walking out of his own home, where he and his girl and their son lived. Sonny's ma, in the aftermath, was so worked up she lost the baby they were expecting, a girl that ended up buried with her father soon after they laid him to rest.

She's a quiet woman as is, Sonny's momma. The older he gets the more he looks like her. She's what some might call pliant—easy to push around, maybe, hands clearly full with Sonny and trying to keep a roof over their heads. But June at ten and Sonny at eleven are only beginning to understand what that means, and tonight they revel in as much cake as they can manage, June's mother convinced by her father and Sonny's just as easy to sway.

They play outside, no snow but the temperatures just starting to dip below freezing as the sun sets. On the back porch, their parents watch them. They don't bother keeping their voices down, not that either June or Sonny care much, building a fort out of cardboard boxes and arguing about who has to play at the dragon they've decided to battle for the night.

At some point Sonny's ma disappears into the house again. June will remember this later—the creak of the porch and the click of the door shutting behind her. Her father's voice, low and familiar in the evening light, her mother next to him, half-turned, like she's trying to watch him at the same time as she watches over June. In the moment in meant nothing to her. If she had remembered, the news she learned five years later wouldn't have been as much of a surprise.

Her mother asks, "And the boys?"

"Good." Darrel has always been a tall man. He's a menacing figure in the dark, but it doesn't stop Faye from looking up at him like he might have an answer for anything she might ask of him.

"Good Valentine's Day?"

"Faye."

"It's a question."

"D'you like the flowers?"

"Which?"

"Both."

"Of course I did." Faye looks towards the kids again. When June waves, she smiles and waves right back. "I put them in a vase, didn't I?"

"Don't mean you like 'em, darlin'."

"Well I do," she says. Her arms are crossed. She says, voice nearly void of emotion, "Thank you."

Darrel hums, not an answer but close. "Who all's comin' by next weekend?"

"A few of the kids at school," Faye says. Darrel moves closer to her. "Sonny, again. Celeste is driving down with the boys and my ma."

"She gonna wanna see me?"

"Who?"

"You know," Darrel says, and there's something like laughter in his voice. It makes Faye stiffen, her silhouette a smudge besides Darrel. "Your ma's never gonna like me, huh."

June plays at the dragon while Sonny tries to slay her. They run in circles, unconcerned, two children on the Eastside, while her mother pretends at something June won't be able to put a name to for a good ten years.

That night, Faye says, "It don't really matter, not really." Her hair is long, that year, longer than she usually keeps it. Full and dark and soft when June reaches out to touch.

"It should. It should bother you, that your ma don't like her only granddaughter's daddy."

"You give her a reason to like you, lately?"

"I think a little bit'a respect goes a long way. Ain't like Junie's got a grandma nearby besides her, after all."

Faye doesn't bother looking at him. Looks straight at June when she answers, instead, and June will wake up remembering it like a nightmare, six years from now: "She's got one grandma and it's 'cause of me. And I think you oughta remember you got _June_ 'cause of me, too."

June waves again, blind to what's in front of her, and Faye waves right back.

She calls out, "C'mon, baby, it's cold out already," and doesn't wait for Darrel to follow when she heads back inside.

* * *

_May, 1970_

The first thing she does is head to the old Shepard house.

June hasn't been there in years, not since she was eighteen years old and Soda barely buried. There should be a word for someone who has to bury their sibling, but as far as she knows, there ain't. She even tried asking Ponyboy, considering all that reading he was up to when she was still living in Tulsa, but he didn't know any, either. Last they spoke June told him to come on down to Sacramento, and he just laughed. She had been sober a month by then, that day, and thought she finally kicked the habit.

Two days later she was shooting up in her ex-boyfriend's cockroach-infested apartment in Folsom, which is why she stops by to see Curly Shepard as soon as she hitches a ride. He's a sight for sore eyes, though that might be the dope calling for her already. The Shepards are stupid good-looking, though, and Curly knows it.

"Blue," he says, a name she ain't used in years, and she scowls. She's feeling a little shaky, and she's never been one for tolerating his flirting, besides. "Ain't you a pretty picture."

She rolls her eyes. In her grip she's got several dirty bills. "How much you charging these days, Curly?"

"No one calls me that anymore," he says, and his hands drop from his hips. He looks twenty even when he's trying to put on a front, hair curling over his ears and neck like Morrison's. He says, sounding more like he did two years ago, the last she saw him, "Less than what they must be charging you out West, looks like. You spend all your money on dope now, huh?"

"Better'n food _and_ sex," she drawls, "now take my damn money."

He clicks his tongue at her like she imagines her mother would. They speak by phone, sometimes, but long-distance is expensive and June hates to think of disappointing her with the truth of who she really is. The year her daddy died was rough on all of them and it hardly let up come the New Year, but for a little while there, it seemed like things were getting better.

Then 'Nam made a bed their home, and things, like most, only got worse.

June's been to the Shepard house exactly once, shortly before she left town. She showed up shaking, half-put together like she'd been rolling around with someone and hadn't cared to hide it. Truth was that she threw herself into a set of bushes trying to avoid Marcelo Alcaraz, who in addition to having an unhealthy preoccupation with her since she was fifteen, also happened to have sold her drugs without actually receiving payment. June was aware, vaguely, that she could use the former to solve the latter, but she'd never liked Alcaraz and didn't want to give him any sort of satisfaction.

It meant she was shit out of luck, though, when it came to getting a hit, which was why she was banging on the door like she was looking for someone. That someone being Tim Shepard, who promptly told her to go the fuck home.

"I ain't selling you shit," he said. He looked pissed. "Last thing I need is one'a your brothers coming out here thinking I got you hooked on this shit. You oughta quit while you have the chance."

"Right," June had said, and scratched at her collarbone, a movement that Tim watched carefully. June, eighteen years old by then, still had not learned how to purposely manipulate a man that was not related to her, and so she didn't try. Tim was good-looking, objectively, but their interactions were limited to the handful of times he found her in places she shouldn't have been in—Buck's, wandering the Eastside, once outside Rogers while she was waiting for Ponyboy to get out of class and he was waiting on his siblings. She doubted she would be able to overcome the image he must have had of her at fifteen, when she was prone to stomping when denied what she desired. She said, instead, not sure she could bring herself to make it home in one piece, "Is Curly around."

The look on his face was unimpressed. "He ain't selling you nothing, either."

That fact is thankfully no longer true, and not just because Curly has no qualms selling her whatever drug she asks for—before she left town, it was usually weed or sometimes sass, when the boyfriend she snagged at sixteen wanted to act up on the weekends. She's moved beyond that, though, in the years since Soda's death; meanwhile, Curly's street presence has clearly only increased since Tim's arrest earlier this year.

He brings this up as she follows him inside his home, the same house the three Shepards grew up in. His ma's nowhere to be found. "You gone to see Tim yet?"

June thinks of the handful of letters she's tried writing and couldn't bring herself to mail, and the one or two she has. Says instead, "Just got off the bus, Shepard. He taking visitors?"

"'Course," Curly says. "Should be out in the next seven, eight months if he plays his cards right. Maybe even six."

"What's the charge again?" It's May, already. She was under the impression he was serving two years, but Pony's air-headed enough she should know better than to take his words for fact.

"Intent to distribute." Curly over-pronounces the words, not that June's going to correct him. She ain't here for small talk, even if she'll admit to some interest in what's going on with Tim. If she remembers correctly, this is the first and only time it's ever been Curly in charge of Shepard territory; she wonders what he thinks of it. "How much you want?"

June's on limited income, meaning she's got nothing coming in now that she's left her job housekeeping, cash on her like she's always got. There's also a cashier's check folded up carefully in the bag slung over her shoulder, but it's meant to get her through her time in Tulsa, not get wasted on enough heroin for her to overdose her first night there.

She's also, in theory, trying to cut back at least a little. This is not the first time she's told herself that, and she doesn't want to think about it not being the last, nor the fact that her current actions suggest the exact opposite. Fact is she's got a little over three weeks until the wedding, and she hasn't figured out where she's sleeping yet. The second Darry catches sight of her he'll be trying to send her to a halfway house. Sneaking around seems passé, even if she's already nauseous at the thought of toughing it out through withdrawal again.

She's hoping Curly lets her smoke out back before kicking her out. Mostly, though, she wants him to shut up—she told him how much she wanted and he's still jabbering, some story about Tim around the time they grabbed him morphing into an update on Angela. It's when he says _Milagros_ that she stiffens.

"What was that?" Curly doesn't seem bothered by the interruption. She only ever tracked him down for a hit; despite that, she knows an uncomfortable amount of information about him, the Shepards, and whatever it is that goes on in their territory. He's the one who told her that Ponyboy was running around with that Carlson girl, a fact that had June hollering with laughter when she called him out on it the next time she was over for dinner. At least then Darry thought it funny, too. He probably won't be too happy to find her like this, though.

But Angela marrying into the Milagros line is bad news for June. Alcaraz, as far as she knows, hasn't kicked the bucket yet; she lost track of how long she went without paying him, but if Jax were dead she would have heard something. Last she knew he was still with that girl of his, the one who gave him a son. She doesn't like where this is going.

"Her and Joey," Curly says, and she calms a little. Jackson and Joseph—Jax and Joey, the former with his eyes on the prize and the youngest always more interested in chasing skirts. "Got married in the fall. Big wedding, he went all out for her."

"He don't care he's her second husband then, huh?" June feigns interest in her nails, filed short like they always are; rubber gloves just aren't comfortable otherwise.

"That wasn't a Church wedding," Curly shrugs. He's lounging on one of his couches, product ready for June to disappear with it, if only he'd let her get close enough to throw some bills down. "Plus, after she lost the baby, you know. She ain't even divorced, they had a—what's it called?"

"Annulment," June says, and squints at him. She's pretty sure those are hard to come by.

"Right," Curly says, and snaps his fingers. "Angie said she was _coerced_ , and since they didn't have no proof she was even pregnant in the first place, well. Ex-husband split town, anyway. Joey's real nice."

Joey's a failed dope-dealer, June knows, but she's not in the mood for conversation besides this. All Angela's news means that she'll have to be sneakier, which already seems like a lost cause—Curly's what the ladies she works with call _chismoso_ , which means if he sees his sister at any point in the future he'll spill the beans. Odds are Angela stays out of men's business, but if she's anything like June was, running around with Sonny and then calling on Alcaraz for pot or pills or powder, then she might have some vested interest in dragging June back to the River Kings.

She's also not sure how Curly's so comfortable talking about miscarriages but, well. June's not here for that discussion, either. She says, instead, "Good to hear. I'll get outta your hair now."

"Next time Tim calls, I'll tell him you're back in town," he offers, and the smile she flashes is a clear grimace.

"Thanks, Shepard," she says, and hustles out of there as fast as she can.

It just so happens that someone else she knows had the same idea as she did, though, because when she walks out of the Shepard house there's Ponyboy—clearly surprised to see her, but he's grinning about as big as June must be, too, no matter the shock that lingers underneath.


	2. yours for the swallowing

GIRLHOOD IS GROWING FRUIT AROUND CYANIDE.  
IT WILL NEVER BE YOURS FOR THE SWALLOWING.

brenna twohy

* * *

_May, 1970_

Ponyboy says, "June!" and when he hugs her she's shocked to find him taller. She's also grateful she put her purchase away.

"What's this," she says, and she holds him by the elbows like her mother did with the boys, before they moved in and would come by to visit. She liked to look them head to toe like they were aliens she'd never seen in her life, _When'd y'all get so big?_ June's too much shorter to shake him, so she squeezes his arms instead and says, "You got taller."

"You been gone two years," he says, but he's still grinning, so at least he doesn't take those two years personally. Darry and her momma might be a different story. "'Less maybe you shrunk."

"I'm five-six," she says, and shoves him away from her when he laughs. Keeps a hand around his elbow, though, afraid of letting go. "Sheesh, you're almost as tall as Darry now. What're you doing here?"

"Came to see Curly." Same old Pony.

"I thought you wasn't getting down here 'til tomorrow." It was part of the reason she'd been unsure of where to sleep, or even how her return to Tulsa was going to go—with Pony around, she _might_ be able to pull the wool over Darry's eyes and hide the worst of her habits. He's too smart to think she's just gotten weird, but Pony might at least buy her a few days.

With Darry, it's almost like looking into a mirror—if the mirror could show how one person could turn out so differently and the same all at once. It ain't that June looks like Darry, at least not more than the other two Curtis boys. Soda always said she and Ponyboy looked the most alike, anyways, the same expressions and short tempers besides.

June likes to think she's as similar to each Curtis boy as she is different, but she can't pretend she ain't as serious as Darry wound up. It's hard to say if it's because both of them gave up things they weren't expecting to, the winter and spring of '65 and '66 alike, or if it's that same intense _Curtis_ quality that all of them ended up with, shared last names or no.

It's hard to say, after all. June can't un-drop out of school same as she can't bring her daddy (and his wife) back. There ain't much of a point to thinking about it. It's not like she lets herself, usually—something about these brothers of hers, though, always gets her to wondering.

Ponyboy says, "Drove down early," and leaves it at that. He did better than June fared, in terms of schooling, but Darry had them all beat with his HVAC certifications and associates, besides. Ponyboy graduated the same year she was supposed to, only the combination of a skipped grade and late birthday screwed him over almost as bad as dropping out did her.

Darry might've stomped around worse than June used to, but Ponyboy was too much of an artist to go for something as practical as an accounting degree. It didn't help that Soda had shipped out while Pony was supposed to be applying to schools. From June's understanding, a single application was sent out; Pony got in but money don't fall from trees, to say nothing of the fights they'd have about _long-term plans_. June's been housekeeping since sixteen; sometimes she regrets choosing dope over a man, but like most things, there's no point in wondering.

Besides, after a year of moping around Tulsa and taking art classes at the local community college, ostensibly so he could save money before transferring somewhere bigger, Ponyboy shacked up with some older broad who figured herself a Merry Prankster. He insisted he wasn't sleeping with her but June ain't stupid. She knows firsthand how these things work. Somewhere in Washington they split; June should have had him drive down to get her so they could come back for the wedding together, but that felt like a surefire way of exposing all her secrets in one fell swoop.

He's already told her he's finally starting real classes in the fall, whatever that means. June's not sure how he found the time to apply, what with his living on a commune the last six months. She tries to tell herself she shouldn't worry, since she wasn't the one responsible for keeping him from becoming a hippie, but it's hard not to. Darry _will_ have a field day, though, considering Pony's hair, the unbuttoned-to-the-sternum shirt, and what appears to be at least three amulets around his neck, so if anything she's glad to have him around. Maybe she even missed him these last two years, too.

June says as much to Ponyboy, voice tender when she says, "I'm happy to see you," and neither can keep from grinning. She tries to shake off the emotion, but she's still got him by an elbow when she says, "You heading to Darry's, after?"

"Yeah," he says, and she marvels at how the two of them must be nearly the same height now, no matter that it makes her a little mad, too—she was taller than him, the first few months they knew they were family—"you staying with him, too?"

She lets go of him, then, and rubs at her face. She still needs a hit, despite the distraction of seeing him. Bad enough she's in town to see her big brother get married and is trying to figure out how to avoid seeing him any more than that. Worst part is she hates to do it. She says, "Ain't asked yet. Might try and see if someone I know's got a spare room."

She wonders what she looks like, for him to be squinting at her the way he is. The kid's not fourteen and naïve, anymore, his birthday coming up in two short months. June never thought they looked all that much alike, save for the chin; she sees too much of Soda in him, the kind of reckless prettiness that gets boys beat up on this side of town. Pony's reputation precedes him unfortunately, or maybe not; between that murder case, the Curtis name, and his running around with Mark Jennings and Curly Shepard, no one's going to let his flower power become him. It's probably for the best.

He could ask her why she's still unsure of her sleeping arrangements, but he doesn't. Just says, "You need a ride somewhere?" and nods when she says no. His next question hurts regardless. "How's your ma doing?"

She tries not to flinch. "Ain't seen her yet."

"Right," Ponyboy says. She doesn't like his tone, but last time she tried telling him off for it—probably a few weeks short of his fifteenth, if she remembers correctly—he dumped a lemonade over her head and then she tried to catch him in a headlock. The memory of Soda's hooting aches. He says, clearly onto her, but hopefully assuming she's on the typical hippie wave like he is, "Well. You should stop by for breakfast tomorrow."

It's past lunchtime already, not that June's eaten. The backpack slung over her shoulder is hiding the dope she just bought, and it feels heavier, somehow. She feels antsy. "They ain't moved into the new place yet?"

"Finishing up some repairs," he says, "you know how Darry is. Ain't like the house is sold yet, anyway."

"Yeah," June says, not that she knew that. She'll ask Ponyboy how he feels about it later; odds are he's written a poem about it already and can just read it to her instead. She spent a lot of time there, too, for what it's worth; odds are the two Curtis boys that remain have forgotten already. "I'll stop by tomorrow, then. I'll even do the dishes."

"Yeah, right," he says, but then he hugs her again and she's got to blink away some tears. "See you soon?"

"Yeah," she repeats, and waits for him to walk up the Shepard's porch steps before she turns away. There aren't too many people she can stay with, at this point, but there's one person who might not ask questions, or at the very least be guilted.

Sonny might've died but his momma didn't. And June's real good at getting what she wants these days.

* * *

Enedina Maldonado looks so much like Sonny it makes June sick. This year makes five since June sat in the passenger seat while some hood out of Brumly shot him dead in broad daylight; if someone had told her then that Dina the dope-fiend would still be alive in 1970 June wouldn't have believed them. She'd probably be angry to know it.

June can't afford to be angry about it right now, though, exhausted and with a faint trembling starting up in her hands. She tries not to stare at them while she stands on the front porch, her knocks far heavier than she meant to make them. The neighborhood looks better than it used to, like someone's scrubbed everything down and made things new again, bright with the promise of a good summer. There's a garden full of flowers out front.

She remembers coming here as child, before Dina ended up on the same shit that June got to herself. She was always a pretty woman, or at least she is in memories. Dina could almost pass, better than either of the Blue Thunder children that would end up half-raised in Tulsa, eyes and hair a matching shade of brown that would get her called _Canela_ in jest. Didn't matter that she could've charmed some white man out on the Westside if she'd tried hard enough—she ended up running with Kings, too, and soon after she met Sonny's late father the two of them turned into three. Part Mexican, part Indian, just like June.

It's early afternoon and Dina's in grass-stained jeans. There's more gray in her hair than she expected. She looks like a mom. It makes something painful bloom in June's chest to see her. The feeling might nearly be mutual, if the shellshocked expression on Dina's face means anything. Despite herself, June smiles—a little meanly, even.

"Hi Dina," she says, not sounding like herself. She remembers being a child on this porch, climbing the tree in the backyard before it was hit by lightning sometime when she was in middle school. She remembers Sonny in this home before he ran off to the Kings the spring after her daddy died. "How you been?"

Dina doesn't move to open the screen door; just looks at her with wide eyes the same color as Sonny's. She has an apron on over her yellow peasant blouse, her hair in a braid longer than June can manage. She's cut it short for a long while, now, at her shoulders instead of spilling to her waist. It's easier, that way. She's got a lot of other things going on, anyway.

She says, "June," and her expression doesn't change, no matter that June's smile widens just a little.

She adjusts her bag over her shoulder. There's a duffle in her left hand, resting against her shin. All she has is clothes and letters, mostly from Ponyboy and Sodapop, _before_. Darry isn't a man of many words, at least not with her. Soda used to say he could talk an ear off if only someone would let him, but as far as June could discern, she wasn't his first choice when it came to socializing.

They spent at least a little time together, before she left town. Mostly while Soda was around, because he was the best at refusing whatever excuses she'd come up with, trying to avoid dinner at the Curtis home. It was hard to be there as often as it was easy. Sometimes it felt like she was intruding. Sometimes it was like she had always been there.

None of that must matter, though, for Darry to have sent out the wedding invitation that arrived for her back in March. _Darrel S. Curtis Jr. and Maxine Webber…_ He calls her Max; June heard him say so, when she called shortly after finding the invitation in her mail. She couldn't wrap her head around it, could only vaguely remember Ponyboy mentioning a girlfriend, sometime between her leaving and Ponyboy following suit.

Darry had sounded embarrassed. She could imagine him rubbing the back of his neck when he told her, "Told Pony to give me your address. Wasn't sure you was still living in the same place, though."

It's a valid concern—she has a tendency to jump ship as needed, these days. It makes her feel like a shadow of herself, sixteen when she dropped out of school and went straight to work. Doing things that needed to be done because if she didn't, she knew no one else would. Nothing like this new version she's turned into, sticking with a shitty boyfriend to get her fix and living hand to mouth while trying to pretend it ain't hard.

It must show on her face that this is the sort of woman she's become. Dina unlocks her screen door and then June's standing in the living room with a vague sense of déjà vu. Nothing about this home feels familiar besides the act of standing there. The wallpaper is new, the floor polished in the afternoon light. Of course; Dina lives here alone and has for years. It makes her ache. Sonny ran off like the place was on fire, and here it is, still standing long after he left.

The only word June can come up to describe it is bright. No doubt Ponyboy would have a field day describing it—something saccharine, probably, something wholly untouched by all the memories that June can find here and in Dina, who steps into the kitchen with barely a word. She could do anything she wanted, she thinks. Make herself at home on the couch and put her feet up on the coffee table, or maybe head into one of the bedrooms she knows the hallway to her left will lead her towards.

She won't, though. Not because she thinks it's rude, though she knows it is. She doesn't want to see how Sonny's room might look now. Can't stand to think of Dina cleaning it out and repurposing it, nor can she bare the sight of it untouched, a shrine to who he was at sixteen and every year before that. She's still surprised no one kicked up a fuss about him running off, but it wasn't like he dropped out of school until afterwards, that last summer he spent bothering June and digging deeper into King business besides.

Instead she follows after Dina, the kitchen as small and crowded as it is in her memory. The walls are painted pink, and there are flowers painstakingly sketched around the window over the sink in black and white. There are plates soaking, and it smells like jalapeños, no doubt from whatever salsa Dina whipped up for lunch. June's stomach rumbles, and she grimaces, embarrassed, when the noise makes Dina look back at her.

The smile she manages must look more like what Dina's used to, for it makes her relax for the first time since she let her in. June feels like a child again.

"When'd you get back?" Dina says. The steadiness in her voice throws June off. She can't remember ever hearing her sound so sure of herself, so untouched by whatever happened around her. She was always an unassuming woman, especially quiet as her addiction worsened. As a child she tried to teach June Spanish, since her daddy didn't speak a lick, but after Uncle Jim died the talking stopped and everything else went shit.

It's a little like what happened after Soda died, if June thinks on it long enough. Good think she doesn't.

"'Bout an hour ago," June says, "maybe two. Came in from California. My brother's getting married."

"Didn't know you knew about them." Her expression doesn't betray her. She turns back to the sink. The water stream is weak, and June watches her elbow jerk as she scrubs at a pot.

June flinches, tries not to let herself get mad. Figures the only ones who didn't have the full story were her and the boys. When she says at much, Dina snorts.

She turns around again, leans against the sink with its poorly running water. "Me and your ma was friends, once."

"That was before the dope, right?"

Dina doesn't take the bait. "Which of them is it? I hear one of them died a few years back."

"Pony's too young for that," June says, like her mother wasn't a few years older when she had her. She knows her daddy was about his age when he married his wife, too. She just can't picture Pony—long-haired, handsome as Sodapop, a dirty hippie like Darry must think of him—settling down with some girl anytime soon, or ever. He ain't ever seemed the type, even when he was some gangly junior in high school dating a girl the year ahead of him and blushing bright red when called out on it. "'S the oldest. Darry."

She doesn't like how impassive Dina's face is. Hates to be out of the loop, no matter that she's done little to deserve to remain there. She wants to be angry; yet another person knew a secret about her daddy when she didn't. But the part of her that's tired—still tired from all of 1965—can't bother to get worked up about it. Dina was friends with her mother, her mother who had a child with a married man and then kept her away from his other children. At twenty she can't make much more sense of it than she could at fifteen, even if she's had a man or two that she might have loved.

Dina says, "That why you came back, then?"

"Yeah," June says. She adjusts her bags. "California ain't all that fun, anyway."

Dina hums. It makes June feel defensive. She's had the feeling since she showed up. "Don't explain why you're here."

June is thankful she doesn't bring up the only reason why she might have stopped by. Sonny's dead. If she had to hear that said aloud, though, she might have lunged for the woman, no matter that her momma raised her to respect her elders. She thinks the last of it is somewhere in ribcage, the only thing keeping her from calling her mother and begging to come back home. Doesn't matter that she left on her volition; showing up like this, shaking apart for lack of a hit, it's as bad as spitting in her face. She can't see her mother, not right now. Maybe before the wedding. Maybe after.

She's got three weeks to get clean. Seeing Curly just now—that's just a necessity, the last time she'll do it. She digs her nails into her palm and pretends to believe it and says, "Wasn't sure if you had extra space."

Once upon a time the shed out back was like a playroom, full of Sonny's things from childhood, all of them bought on the Kings' dime. Who knows what Dina's done with it—if she's had it knocked down, like she did that lightning-struck tree, or if she's converted into something that better reflects whatever kind of woman she must be now, to no longer have that starved look in her eye that June sometimes sees in her reflection.

If she says no then she'll head back to the Shepard's. Odds are Curly will let her sleep in Angie's old room, especially if she offers to cook and clean. He's gullible like that, one of the few men not related to her that June can admit to trusting.

Dina says, "Them brothers of yours don't want you?"

June pushes her sleeve up and tries not to feel satisfied at the way it makes her jerk back. She says, smiling, "I just figured if anyone gets me these days, Dina, it might be you."


End file.
